Former Democratic Senate nominee claims "Ketchup packets are not available in rural areas."

[Benjamin Frank]

Do any of the people here who have commented live in rural areas?  Because it might be true...

The Great Ketchup Shortage of 2021 — which has led to out of stocks of mostly ketchup packets as restaurants removed germ-encrusted condiment dispensers due to the pandemic — has an end in sight. ... The Wall Street Journal first reported on the ketchup shortage in early April. Apr. 29, 2021

Obviously that was almost three months ago, but it's not a surprise that rural areas would be the last to ketchup in supplies.  (bad joke, but I'm being serious.)

I've heard that other restaurants are experiencing shortages of other packets as well.

[Benjamin Frank]

Even if it were true, the fact that this was the best response she could come up with shows how below-average she is.

That people are commenting here by laughing against her as being out of touch and had no idea of food deserts, the 'great ketchup shortage' that was caused by the need to ramp up supply chains with Covid and other related issues, which have been discussed here in multiple threads, or the general poverty in rural areas that might make it far less likely for these places to even get packages of ketchup, and to respond after mocking her mercilessly as 'stupid' or 'out of touch' with "oh, maybe it is true after all" shows how below-average many of the commenters in this thread have been.

Smug arrogance based on ignorance only shows the stupidity of the commenter.  Obviously there is no point in apologizing to Swearingin, but, as a suggestion, how about actually learning about the facts of the situation before making stupid and ignorant comments?

I'm sorry for the minor insults in these comments, but there are few things that anger me more than smug and stupid cynicism.

[Benjamin Frank]

Even if it were true, the fact that this was the best response she could come up with shows how below-average she is.

That people are commenting here by laughing against her as being out of touch and had no idea of food deserts, the 'great ketchup shortage' that was caused by the need to ramp up supply chains with Covid and other related issues, which have been discussed here in multiple threads, or the general poverty in rural areas that might make it far less likely for these places to even get packages of ketchup, and to respond after mocking her mercilessly as 'stupid' or 'out of touch' with "oh, maybe it is true after all" shows how below-average many of the commenters in this thread have been.

Smug arrogance based on ignorance only shows the stupidity of the commenter.  Obviously there is no point in apologizing to Swearingin, but, as a suggestion, how about actually learning about the facts of the situation before making stupid and ignorant comments?

I'm sorry for the minor insults in these comments, but there are few things that anger me more than smug and stupid cynicism.

It's a nonsense poverty fetishism comment.

West Virginia isn't some sprawling wasteland.  Even in the rural parts, there are many little towns, which have grocery stores and diners, which have ketchup packets.  Unless you live in a ski resort, there's nowhere in West Virginia where you're not <20 minutes from the nearest McDonalds, of which there are also dozens in the state.

People think West Virginia is just a bunch of hillbillies living up in the Appalachian mountains.  The Appalachians don't even go through WV.  They're primarily in western Virginia and WV only has the western foothills.

In West Virginia, 14.9 percent of  households were food insecure between 2014 and 2016, on average. This is flat from 2011-2013 but higher than 2004-2006 averages.


https://www.chn.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/West-Virginia-state-report-draft-10.13.17.pdf

Between 2017 and 2018, West Virginia’s poverty rate increased by over a percentage point to 19.1 percent

https://catalyst.independent.org/2019/10/30/the-struggles-of-west-virginia/

[Benjamin Frank]

In West Virginia, 14.9 percent of  households were food insecure between 2014 and 2016, on average. This is flat from 2011-2013 but higher than 2004-2006 averages.


https://www.chn.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/West-Virginia-state-report-draft-10.13.17.pdf

Between 2017 and 2018, West Virginia’s poverty rate increased by over a percentage point to 19.1 percent

https://catalyst.independent.org/2019/10/30/the-struggles-of-west-virginia/

This is the same thing people did with Trump where they try to take some absurd, outlandish comment and water it down to something reasonable.

The quote is "ketchup packets are not available in rural areas."  It's not "rural areas struggle with poverty and food security."  That would be a reasonable claim and totally uninteresting.  The claim that rural WV is such a barren desert that it's impossible to find the most basic American condiment is just laughable.  Just like virtually everything else she says.

By the way, she's been on a tear.  There are a couple other gems in her recent Twitter history, and she also dramatically "left" the Democratic Party a few days ago.

I commented on this in a previous post.  She is -or was anyway - almost certainly correct due to the Covid pandemic and the decline of supply chains.  In late April there was the 'great Ketchup shortage of 2021.'  As I said in that post, it's not a surprise that poor rural areas would be the last to get back stocked with these things (poorer and less people.)

I think she was combining something that almost certainly really did happen where she lived - an inability to get packets of ketchup along with a bit of hyperbole (I agree it's not that people in West Virginia are going to die for lack of ketchup packages.) This is far from outlandish, especially in the context of the tweet she was replying to.

The article I posted also mentioned the other part of the problem - restaurant condiment containers had become germ infested due to the restaurants having been shown down for sometime so they weren't clean or safe. It was easier for awhile to ship some areas ketchup packages while these restaurants received new condiment containers, however, it resulted in ketchup package shortages in other areas.

It's not exactly the easiest to disinfect plastic food containers. It can't be heat treated and it probably can't be safely disinfected with bleach or anything either.

Again, it would help to actually learn about situations before making arrogant, snarky and ultimately factually wrong comments.

[Benjamin Frank]

McDonald's isn't even a healthy choice for regular meals, so even if one is nearby it doesn't solve nutritional needs. West Virginia has had more deaths than births as of late so fast food is not the answer. Republicans and even some Democrats are too busy trying to fight "wokeness" to actually tackle real issues like food deserts. It wold be more productive to come up with plan to fight this than to argue about social issues and trying to police entertainment constantly.

It is interesting that you focus on the Democrats to be the responsible party (and I don't necessarily agree that the issues behind 'wokeness' aren't serious) rather than telling the Republicans to be responsible and stop focusing on voter suppression and endless virtue signaling on abortion.  After all, in West Virginia anyway these are mostly all Republican voters.

[Benjamin Frank]

It is interesting that you focus on the Democrats to be the responsible party (and I don't necessarily agree that the issues behind 'wokeness' aren't serious) rather than telling the Republicans to be responsible and stop focusing on voter suppression and endless virtue signaling on abortion.  After all, in West Virginia anyway these are mostly all Republican voters.

The liberal nonsense about virtue signaling on abortion indicates a fundamental inability to grasp why so many rural and poor people oppose abortion. It is not because they are idiots, but because they see through the veneer of a certain cosmopolitan bipartisan neoliberalism which refuses to understand that judging humans on the basis of development is evil social Darwinism.

The sole point of my post, which I thought was obvious, and isn't even original fwiw, is the asymmetrical expectations/demands that people have of Republicans vs. Democrats. 

Republicans are considered to be fine merely for not endorsing an attempted insurrection on a given day while Democrats are considered to be no better than Republicans if a single Democratic member of Congress plays politics on a given issue. 

In regards to the comment I was initially responding to, if you want to build coalitions and want to do so with the Democrats, it's generally not a good idea to say "let's focus on my concerns because your concerns are stupid." 

In regards to abortion, I could address that as well, but I'd rather leave it out for now anyway.

[Benjamin Frank]

The argument was in regards to a broad claim made by GMA (that WV isn't mountainous/Appalachian, that people aren't poor there

Jesus Christ this website f---ing sucks.  Please, by all means, quote the post where I said there are no poor people in West Virginia, or else apologize for lying.

HOLY CRAP A POLITICIAN SAID SOMETHING DUMB/OUT OF TOUCH!!!! We're gonna need at least four pages of GMac effortposts and Kingpoleon non sequiturs to really get this issued settled.

I've only made 4 posts in this entire thread.  That's 4 out of 58.  It feels like I'm filling up the entire thread because everyone else keeps quoting my posts.

I think it's a bit rich for you to complain about being misinterpreted when you either intentionally misinterpreted Swearingin's reply to a tweet or commented out of ignorance in order to make a stupidly cynical, snarky comment.